The Dreamer

As if I were not a man who sleeps at night, and regularly has all the same experiences
while asleep as madmen do when awake – indeed sometimes even more improbable
ones. How often, asleep at night, am I convinced of just such familiar events – that I am
here in my dressing-gown, sitting by the fire – when in fact I am lying undressed in bed!
Yet at the moment my eyes are certainly wide awake when I look at this piece of paper;
I shake my head and it is not asleep; as I stretch out and feel my hand I do so
deliberately, and I know what I am doing. All this would not happen with such
distinctness to someone asleep. Indeed! As if I did not remember other occasions when
I have been tricked by exactly similar thoughts while asleep! As I think about this more
carefully, I see plainly that there are never any sure signs by means of which being
awake can be distinguished from being asleep. The result is that I begin to feel dazed,
and this very feeling only reinforces the notion that I may be asleep.

Does Descartes know what he is doing when he shakes his head and stretches out his
hand?

Descartes, Meditations, 1641

 Norman the Clairvoyant

Norman, under certain conditions which usually obtain, is a completely reliable

clairvoyant with respect to certain kinds of subject matter. He possesses no evidence or
reasons of any kind for or against the general possibility of such a cognitive power or for
or against the thesis that he possesses it. One day Norman comes to believe that the
President is in New York City, though he has no evidence either for or against this belief.
In fact the belief is true and results from his clairvoyant power under circumstances in
which it is completely reliable.

Does Norman know that the President is in New York City?

Laurence BonJour, The Structure of Empirical Knowledge, 1985

 Ten Coins and a Job

Suppose that Smith and Jones have applied for a certain job. And suppose that Smith
has strong evidence for the following conjunctive proposition:

(d) Jones is the man who will get the job, and Jones has ten coins in his pocket.

Smith’s evidence for (d) might be that the president of the company assured him that
Jones would in the end be selected, and that he, Smith, had counted the coins in
Jones’s pocket ten minutes ago. Proposition (d) entails:

(e) The man who will get the job has ten coins in his pocket.

Let us suppose that Smith sees the entailment form (d) to (e), and accepts (e) on the
grounds of (d), for which he has strong evidence. . . .

But imagine, further, that unknown to Smith, he himself, and not Jones, will get the job.
And, also, unknown to Smith, he himself has ten coins in his pocket. Proposition (e) is
then true, though proposition (d), from which Smith inferred (e), is false.

Does Smith know that (e) is true?

Edmund Gettier, “Is Justified True Belief Knowledge?,” 1963

 The Fake Barns

Henry is driving in the countryside with his son. For the boy’s edification Henry
identifies various objects on the landscape as they come into view. “That’s a cow,” says
Henry, “That’s a tractor,” “That’s a silo,” “That’s a barn,” etc. Henry has no doubt about
the identity of these objects; in particular, he has no doubt that the last-mentioned object
is a barn, which indeed it is. Each of the identified objects has features characteristic of
its type. Moreover, each object is fully in view, Henry has excellent eyesight, and he
has enough time to look at them reasonably carefully, since there is little traffic to
distract him.

(1) Given the information, are you inclined to say that Henry knows that the object is a
barn?

Suppose we are told that, unknown to Henry, the district he has just entered is full of
papier-mâché facsimiles of barns. These facsimiles look from the road exactly like
barns, but are really just façades, without back walls or interiors, quite incapable of
being used as barns. They are so cleverly constructed that travelers invariable mistake
them for barns. Having just entered the district, Henry has not encountered any
facsimiles; the object he sees is a genuine barn. But if the object on the site were a
facsimile, Henry would mistake it for a barn.

(2) Given the additional information, are you inclined to say that Henry knows that the
object is a barn?

Alvin Goldman, Discrimination and Perceptual Knowledge, 1976

 The Airport

Mary and John are at the L.A. airport contemplating taking a certain flight to New York.
They want to know whether the flight has a layover in Chicago. They overhear someone
ask a passenger Smith if he knows whether the flight stops in Chicago. Smith looks at
the flight itinerary he got from the travel agent and respond, yes I know ― it does stop in
Chicago. It turns out that Mary and John have a very important business contact they
have to make at the Chicago airport. Mary says, how reliable is that itinerary? It could
contain a misprint. They could have changed the schedule at the last minute. Mary and
John agree that Smith doesn't really know that the plane will stop in Chicago. They
decide to check with the airline agent.

Do Mary and John really know that the plane will stop in Chicago?

Stewart Cohen, “Contextualism, Skepticism, and The Structure of Reasons,” 1999

 The “Heartbreaker”

Sixty golfers are entered in the Wealth and Privilege Invitational Tournament. The
course has a short but difficult hole, known as the ‘‘Heartbreaker’’. Before the round
begins, you think to yourself that, surely, not all sixty players will get a hole-in-one on
the ‘‘Heartbreaker.’’

Do you really know that not all sixty players will get a hole-in-one on the “Heartbreaker”?

Jonathan Vogel, “Subjunctivitis,” 2007

 Responses to Thought-Experiments in Epistemology

The Dreamer
Does Descartes know what he is doing when he shakes his head and stretches out his
hand?

_______ Yes ________ No

Norman the Clairvoyant

Does Norman know that the President is in New York City?

_______ Yes ________ No

Ten Coins and a Job

Does Smith know that (e) is true?

_______ Yes ________ No

The Fake Barns

(1) Given the initial information, are you inclined to say that Henry knows that the object
is a barn?

_______ Yes ________ No

(2) Given the additional information about the presence of barn façades in the area, are
you inclined to say that Henry knows that the object is a barn?

_______ Yes ________ No

The Airport
Does Smith really know that the plane will stop in Chicago?

_______ Yes ________ No

The “Heartbreaker”
Do you really know that not all sixty golfers will get a hole-in-one on the “Heartbreaker”?

_______ Yes ________ No